Today, September 19th, Sub Pop is announcing the signing of Deep Sea Diver, the Seattle-based rock band led by guitarist and vocalist Jessica Dobson, to release their music to the world and beyond. You can now watch the official video for “Billboard Heart,”  a new song from their forthcoming album, due in early 2025.
 
The video was directed by Dobson, her Deep Sea Diver bandmate and partner Peter Mansen, and cinematographer Tyler Kalberg. 
 
The rapturous “Billboard Heart” is a stunning introduction to Deep Sea Diver’s universe. The song puts Dobson and her band in the company of St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, and Flock of Dimes, bands that have found ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. Dobson punches through her past here with this new song and forthcoming album. As she howls during “Billboard Heart” she is “welcoming the future by letting go of it.”
 
Dobson offers this on the song, “‘Billboard Heart” is a song that felt like a strange transmission, a new emotion, and a spirit-filled dream when it came. It is my nod to the simplicity of my favorite Tom Petty songs and to my love for Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas. The feeling of standing in the lonesome desert, embracing every particle of yourself, even the ones that are hard to look at, and fighting for your spirit to move through this world without entanglement. It is about being present and embracing the future while wholeheartedly letting go of any amount of control that I think I have in this life. ‘Billboard Heart’ is both a longing for something that may not exist and a place where I can be free.”
 
“Billboard Heart” is Deep Sea Diver’s first new music since Impossible Weight, the band’s Billboard charting album from 2020. It includes the title track duet with Sharon Van Etten and “Stop Pretending,” which made “NPR Music’s “100 Best Songs of 2020.” Impossible Weight was also #1 on KEXP’s “Top 90.3 Albums of 2020” list.
 
In addition to her work as Deep Sea Diver, Dobson has logged time as a touring member for Beck and The Shins and has performed with numerous other musicians including Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, Boeckner, and Dinosaur Jr. In addition to headline touring, they’ve supported the likes of Death Cab for Cutie and Wilco. Most recently, Deep Sea Diver played to the largest audiences of their career, supporting Pearl Jam twice within the last year — first with a handful of dates in the Fall of 2023 and, more recently, a lengthier run in May 2024.
 
Earlier this month, Deep Sea Diver covered Yo La Tengo’s “Stockholm Syndrome” for the Every Possible Way benefit compilation which is raising money and awareness for gun safety (see Rolling Stone news story, September 6th).
 
Deep Sea Diver is singer and multi-instrumentalist Jessica Dobson, drummer Peter Mansen, and keyboardist Elliot Jackson.